Focus misplaced when dealing with immigrant crisis

The photographs say crisis. The faces of Central American children and families peering from behind fences, crowded rooms, makeshift beds on hard floors of Border Patrol facilities illustrate a humanitarian emergency that has overwhelmed federal government.

The tales of why the tens of thousands of immigrants are coming tear at the heart. One social worker from El Salvador told The New York Times that she left a good job to get her 11-year-old away from the violent gangs in her neighborhood.

"The gangs came to my house," the daughter was quoted saying this week. "They told my mother: 'Take care of your daughter. Her body is becoming so pretty.'"

Yes, it is a crisis. But some political hardliners on immigration seem to see something else, too -- a windfall.

Candidates like Dan Patrick, the Republican nominee for Texas lieutenant governor, couldn't have dreamed up a better backdrop for their crusades against immigration reform if they'd paid a political consultant to stage it.

In a way, Patrick, a Houston state senator, finally got photographic proof of those invading Mexicans he's been ranting about on the campaign trail.

Timing is perfect as well, coming just after Texas Republican delegates at the state convention scrapped a practical solution to immigration reform including a guest worker program in favor of a stance that demands securing the border first. As if the latter could ever be accomplished without the former.

It can't. And that's the point, I guess. To keep the argument burning. Just as we do with abortion. Not to solve anything. But to rile. To enrage. To mobilize.

The current crisis feeds the flame. Hardline Republicans and conservative websites quickly seized on the situation as a kind of I-told-you-so moment. To them, it isn't an aberration, a modern Mariel boatlift. It is an expected outgrowth of failed border policy by the Obama Administration.

It isn't just a humanitarian crisis created in large part by worsening poverty and increasingly violent conditions in the immigrants' home countries. It is a crisis in border security -- one even worthy of warfare rhetoric, it seems.

Texas' top leaders, led by Gov. Rick Perry, channeled Iraq on Wednesday when they approved a "surge" of Texas law enforcement to "combat" the flow of immigrant children, families and others into the country. The operation will reportedly put boots on the ground and patrols in the air and water.

And if you read a Patrick press release these days, you might think it was IMMIGEDDON. A recent statement managed to evoke disease, hardened criminals and terrorists all in the first paragraph.

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"Over the past few weeks the lack of security along our Texas Border has been exposed for all to see," he wrote later, adding further down "our border is less secure than ever to the drug cartels, human traffickers, and potential terrorist activities."

There's never been a publicly documented case of a known terrorist entering the country through our southern border. Serious terrorists, as one policy expert told me, simply have better options – such as visas.

Patrick then called on state leaders to immediately allocate $1.3 million a week in emergency spending for the rest of the year for added border security -- which effectively is what they agreed to Wednesday.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican nominee for governor, meanwhile, asked the Obama administration for $30 million for state-based border security operations.

"With the Border Patrol's focus shifted to this crisis, we have grave concerns that dangerous cartel activity, including narcotics smuggling and human trafficking, will go unchecked because Border Patrol resources are stretched too thin," Abbott wrote.

Yes, we have a crisis on our hands, one that could possibly present some added security concerns. Although, I have a difficult time imaging drug that smugglers and human traffickers – whose crimes require obscurity – would flock to the action, the bright lights of media frenzy and border officers on heightened alert.

But here's the thing to understand: this situation wasn't caused by lacking border security. And it won't be fixed by further militarization of the Rio Grande. Most of these children and families aren't trying to sneak across the border, as those crossing illegally usually do. They're not evading Border Patrol officers; they're running straight to them. They're behaving like asylum-seekers, not invaders.

According to news reports, many of the immigrants seem to be under the false impression that they will be given a temporary permit to stay in the country.

The rumor is probably rooted in the fact that many immigrants who can't be immediately deported are given a notice to appear in court. But the backlog for a court hearing to help determine if the immigrant has a good claim to stay here is 577 days, according to the Migration Policy Institute, and 363,239 removal cases are in the queue.

"That's just a crazy system," said the institute's Marc Rosenblum. "And there's no way to defend that. Nobody should think that's good."

The lag time not only causes the government to lose track of immigrants, who often don't show up for hearings, but it creates an incentive for folks to come here if they're guaranteed more than a year of sanctuary.

All the focus on front-line security, and not on processing, is part of the problem, according to a recent institute report. While the number of Border Patrol agents has soared from about 4,000 in 1992 to more than 21,000 in 2013, funding for immigration courts hasn't kept pace. In the past decade, funding for the Executive Office for Immigration Review has grown about 70 percent, compared with funding for enforcement operations, which has grown by about 300 percent.

The answer isn't as simple as adequately funding the courts, but it would go a long way. Much farther than demanding more boots on the ground or drones or more miles of fence.

"Even if we had a fence," Rosenblum said, "all of those kids would present themselves at a port of entry and make the same claim."

Instead of more money for enforcement, Rosenblum says Texas' leading gubernatorial contender, for one, should make a different request: "Abbott should be saying to Obama 'give us some more judges down here so we can process these cases.'"